Star Time (54 page)

"And the king should be named Gregory?" Greg tried out the sound: "Gregory the Second. Sounds more like a pope than a king."

"Definitely not you.
Popes are supposed to have at least a nodding acquaintance with God."

And not just his competition, Greg finished to himself.

Despite the lateness of the booking, a business colleague was able to arrange accommodations for them at Château
d'Artigny
, a spacious country mansion converted to a luxury hotel. In the dining room Greg ran into a good-humored Los Angeles lawyer he knew who specialized in the music business. The man was there with his wife.

A hazy wine-lit glow had descended on the couples when they bid goodnight after dinner and made their way up and down stairs and corridors to their quarters.

Greg made love to Diane because he missed not being able to make love to Chris, because today, tonight, Diane had been tender and
compliant and had not tried to
be both king and queen, and because they had both drunk too much to be on guard.

"I traveled all that way just to see you." Chris was steaming. "You could have told her you had a business meeting in Switzerland and would be back on Monday."

Chris was speaking on the phone to Greg from New York. He was still in Paris and would be going on to London. Diane had already left him to fly home.

"She wanted to come along," Greg said.

"That was supposed to be our weekend. We get so little time together. You made love to her, right?"

"Yes."

"Damn."

"What about Thursday night?" he asked. "I'll be back by then."

"I can't. I agreed to speak at a benefit. Ken has a fund-raiser Friday night, and I've got to be there. He knows that as a journalist I can't actively campaign for him, but I do have to show up from time to time."

"He invited Diane and me."

"That bothers me, Greg."

"I got us out of it. Besides, we’ve already contributed the legal limit to his campaign."

"Saturday morning?"

"We're giving a brunch at the country house for a group of our bankers and their wives. One's a company director." He thought he heard a painful sigh through the receiver.

"And so, Diane gets another weekend."

"If it's any consolation, I'm not happy about it either."

"And you'll make love to her."

"I doubt it."

"Now,
that's
some consolation. Anyway, Hannah Rafael and I are flying to Maine this weekend."

"A story?"
Hannah was a senior producer for FBS's nightly news.

"Don't know yet. I have to talk to you about it though."

"Big stuff?" he asked.

"Could be.
I'll try to get myself on your calendar for Thursday."

"Seems like a long time from now. I miss you."

"Love is really shitty sometimes," Chris said.

Applause broke out as Stew and Susan entered sound stage E. They had spent most of the night polishing the script for the
Scum
episode to be shot this week and were about to distribute revised copies to the actors and crew.

"Congratulations," the set designer called out. He was supervising construction of the additional sets required this week.

"Congratulations on what?" Stew asked with calculated ingenuousness.

"The
People
magazine story.
It was great."

"Oh, that," Stew said nonchalantly.

Susan laughed. "Don't let him fool you. He's thinking of having it bronzed."

The article and the photos had been the opening salvo in the publicity campaign that would run through the first months of the fall season to attract viewers to
Scum.
The angle was how a former TV news executive had transitioned to series
showrunner
after meeting Susan
at a party years
after she was in his writing class and how they had fallen in love while creating what the magazine called "the fall's hot new show for FBS."

Recent months had seen a lot of changes in Stew. He was well rested because he had given up the job at
The Guts of the Story
after discovering that if he and Susan played the parts of characters from their new series in the bedroom, his imagination could whip up the most delicious plots and dialogue—while keeping Susan happy and satisfied.

His appearance had changed, too. His mustache and beard were gone, his once-thinning hair had been surgically enhanced into a bush of curls, and he was considering an eyelift. His shoes cost twice as much as his monthly rent once had, part of a new wardrobe that occupied the closets in Susan's second bedroom. The Jaguar had been traded in for a BMW and the BMW for a Mercedes, the leases paid for by their production company. The money was flowing in, so what did it matter? He possessed everything he could possibly want. Life was really
good,
he had finally begun to believe.

The stage manager gestured toward the rear of the sound stage.

"She said she has some business with you," he told Stew.

Stew peered into the darkness at the figure walking purposefully toward him. Large sunglasses hid her face. She removed them as she stepped into the light.

"Patty!" he exclaimed. He had not seen his wife since the day they separated.

"I just stopped by to serve you with some papers," she said pleasantly. Her law firm had business with Monumental. She had come by after a meeting.

"What papers?"

"Divorce."

"I thought we
were
divorced. I signed something when we split up."

"That was just a temporary separation agreement."

"Well," he wondered aloud, "isn't the other part automatic?"

"Not quite. There's the matter of community property."

"All you wanted was the house and tuition for Wendy. I'm paying that. Ahead of time," he added proudly.

"But that was before."

"Before what?"

She drew
People
magazine from her briefcase.
"Before you were doing well enough for it to matter, of course.
If what they say about the television series is true, we should be worth several million dollars at least."

"We?" he bellowed.

"Stew, dear, we're still husband and wife," she amiably explained, and then said, "And before I discovered you were having an affair behind my back with that woman who’s our partner."

"This is crazy."

"You can't deny you deserted me and left me without a cent."

"You kicked me out when I had nothing."

"Isn't that really a matter for the court to decide?" she asked sweetly.

"Court?" He was beside himself.

"The divorce laws are intended to protect wives from being taken advantage of."

"You can't be serious."

"I'm sure when you hire a lawyer, he'll explain it all to you," she intoned soothingly.

Stew hung his head, as if stretching his neck for an ax's fall.

"As long as I'm here," she added, "why don't you show me around our set? I'm really very proud of you, dear. And I'm sure when you read the divorce complaint, you'll be very proud of me."

"You owe this story to me, Greg," Chris asserted. She was sitting in his office with Alan Howe and Hugo Ramirez. "When you wanted some lighter interviews from me on
Confidentially Speaking
, I gave you pure helium and didn't make a peep. I've run my tail to Hell and back. Well, I want this. It could be a big story. That's why we didn't want to go any further without your approval."

"We'd be taking on the secretary of Defense," Greg pointed out, "and for all we know, the President."

"The President may not even know what's happening up there," Chris said. "But something sure is."

"That's still supposition."

"At a time when the U.S. and the Russians have been dismantling nuclear missiles and considering whether to start talks on a new
disarmament treaty, our army may be secretly building up our ICBM arsenal in the woods in Maine."

Greg rejoined.
"
May
be.
You have a lot more digging to do. All you have are the names of a missile technician posted there and some source in Defense who won't say anything on camera."

"So far the story makes sense: The secretary is a
superhawk
, who’s unhappy that the President has ordered him to cut back on DOD’s budget. Privately he’s saying the country’s at risk."

"Alan?" Greg inquired.

"This is a big news story," the News Division head said. "That's the business we're in."

Hugo nodded his concurrence. No doubts, Greg noted.

He shook his head. “Our focus should be on a fall season that will make or break us, not stirring up controversy."

"This is for the News Division. It has nothing to do with Entertainment."

He grew irritated. "It has everything to do with whether this network survives."

Chris spoke up again. "And if the secretary really has gone off on this secret agenda and is endangering international cooperation, the story could be about whether our country

a lot of countries

are now in the middle of a nuclear shooting range."

No one spoke after that. Greg stared out the window in thought. Chris had elevated the issue to a place he had not wanted to go.

He turned back to the
room,
exhaling the long breath he had been holding in. "Okay, we have to pursue it." He pointed a finger at her. "But you better make sure every fact is nailed down twice."

"You'll see the piece first," she promised gravely. A twinkle returned to her eye. "We're even now. You remember that Swiss assignment that fell through at the last minute?"

He refused to take the bait.

She stood up. "Please wish Diane a nice weekend for me, will you?"

Gus Krieger and two of Marian's people were waiting for her in a screening room at FBS's Los Angeles office tower when she arrived from a breakfast meeting. He was there to show them the just-completed two-hour film that would serve as the first episode of
Miss Grimsby's College for Pious Young Ladies
.

Marian had already committed to financing a full season of half-hour scripts for a series. If she gave approval now, Gus would start series' production immediately. FBS was putting up all the financing.

"Overall I love it," Marian assured him when the lights came up. "But I have some reservations."

"What?" he warily asked.

Marian turned to the other two programmers. "What did you think of the leads?"

"I hated the actor playing the hip guy from town," the young woman in charge of comedy development answered.

A major catalyst for much of the action was a guileful young male character from the nearby town
who
often sneaked into the all-girl boarding school to pursue money-making scams with some of the young women, while romancing them as well. Halfway through the film, he moved into a room in the attic and had to contrive elaborate ruses to keep from getting caught. Occasionally, disguised as one of the female students, he bumped into the headmaster, who was sometimes also dressed as a woman, so as to impersonate the nonexistent Miss Grimsby.

The other programmer agreed. "The character is supposed to be a glib, scheming charmer—a ladies' man without seeming like a rat. We have to like him. I felt the guy you have is boring and charmless. Everything slows to a crawl when he's on."

"My feeling exactly," Marian confirmed and turned back to Gus. "You've got to recast the part."

"That would mean re-shooting about forty minutes of this movie," Gus warned.

"We'll pay for the re-shoot. Tack the extra days onto the schedule before you
start
shooting the series."

Gus agreed to begin the search for a replacement immediately. Marian and the others mentioned several actors he should look at. She made clear that FBS would not approve shooting the series until he found one FBS approved.

He stood up.
"Back to the glamour of big-time TV."

Marian wanted to keep the pressure on Gus. The truth was that her flexibility to substitute another series in his time slot was not
so
great as she let on. Several shows in the lineup were having production problems.
Loving
Luba
had not even commenced shooting for the new season, which began next month. Although her salary had been raised and her husband named executive producer, Annette Valletta had suddenly made new demands and had refused to start shooting until she got her way, obviously believing she had FBS over a barrel.